Saturday, September 26, 2009

Last night I had the chance to see my favorite comedian. I'm just going to start this post off by saying that this show was way better than I expected... and I expected great things from this show.

Mike Birbiglia played the Pabst Theatre last night. I am going to try and recall as much as I can about the show. This might be harder than I previously thought due to the large amount of alcohol that was consumed after the show.

The opening act for this show was great. He was a gentlemen by the name of Henry Phillips. I really wish I would have picked up his album he was selling. I will have to try and find it. Henry falls into the guitar genre of comedy. I really like comedy that involves songs and guitars and pianos and that kind of stuff. I highly recommend checking him out.

Now, on to Birbiglia. He opened the show by coming out and talking about his experience at Miller Park on Monday night. He got to throw out a ceremonial first pitch before the Brewers took on the Cubs. There is a very funny video of this available online and this moment was made even funnier by the fact that he was the third first pitch and that the girl that went before him, as he put it, threw like a boy which was bad because he throws like a girl. This was a perfect start to the show.

If you haven't seen Birbiglia, his comedy consists of telling stories from his life. These are all true stories which he makes sure to tell the audience right away. Even though I've heard his explanation of this, it is still funny and plays well. The title of this post comes from a story he was telling about using satellite navigation systems and how they are like a really pushy girlfriend in the car. He talked about pulling over to get food while the nav system kept telling him to turn around and get back on the highway. He then when on to say, "I've got crispy chicken needs." Or something like that, again, the booze is skewing some of the details.

He also told stories about his sleep walking. It was a hilarious story that involved a La Quinta hotel and jumping out of a window. I was crying at this point in the show because it was so funny. I believe I also have figured out that I might suffer from the same ailment that Birbiglia does. I also sleep walk and act out my dreams all the time. I need to remember what the thing is called so I can look it up.

I was crying because I was laughing so hard at several parts of the show. This comedy concert was probably the best one I've ever seen. Birbiglia brought it and was even funnier than I thought. Now, don't get me wrong, I think he is hilarious and I knew he would be funny, but he was even funnier than I thought.

I know that Birbiglia did a pilot for a network and I don't think it got picked up or they are still thinking about it or something, but I thought to myself last night that his act would translate perfectly to a sitcom. I can also see how his off-Broadway show did so well. I still wish I had the chance to get out to NYC to see it. Hopefully he'll be back and I'll have a chance.

I wish I could remember more of his stories right now, but the malted hops are still clouding my brain. Maybe Reid can fill in some of the blanks.

If you aren't already a huge fan, do yourself a favor and check out Mike Birbiglia.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

I figure this can be a fun feature and reinvigorate Medium Pace a little.

I have been surfing around the youtube during boring parts of my day and rediscovering great videos of songs that I thought were totally kick ass when I was a young white boy growing up in Northeastern Wisconsin.

The first installment includes Green Jelly and their song Three Little Pigs.

Watch and enjoy...

My favorite part might be when they refer to the 3rd little pigs dad as Pig Nugent. Very funny

Monday, September 14, 2009

While the rest of you were enjoying the Packers/Bears game, I attended the U2 show at Soldier Field where my crappy AT&T's service was jammed by so many people trying to use their iphones to send photos of Bono to all of their friends. Thankfully my special lady friend has Verizon so she was able to get score updates. BUT back to the issue at hand... U2 360 Tour. This was my first U2 concert and enabled me to mark another "must see" band off of my list.

I have to say, the stage was massive and over-the-fucking-top impressive. Initially, I thought it was some sort of mechanical spider like in "Wild, Wild, West" (a wiki wiki wild wild) but it turns out that it is supposed to be a spaceship and eventually I realized that it was based off of the alien ships from "Independence Day" (Will Smith movie reference count: 2). It had all sorts of moving parts and a crazy amount of speakers. It was so big that the top of it actually popped out of Soldier Field and could be seen from Lake Shore Drive. Enough about the crazy stage, on the the music.

Snow Patrol opened and surprisingly they were not terrible. That's not to say that they were great but going into it I was bitching and moaning about having to see Snow Patrol. Kaiser Chiefs and Glasvegas had opened some of the European shows so I felt kind of jilted. BUT they actually kind of rocked. Maybe I give them a hard time because all I ever hear on the radio by them is the kind of sentimental crap that gets played on "Grey's Anatomy" during an operating room death montage. Anyway, the lead singer was pretty amusing and basically admitted that he had been shit-faced every night since he arrived in Chicago. Plus, he played to the locals by sporting a Bears t-shirt.

There was a brief changeover which was about enough time for me to grab a fresh beer and then I knew it was on when they cutoff MGMT in the middle of "Time to Pretend" on the house system and started playing "Space Oddity" by Bowie over the crazy spaceship system. They played the whole song as the stage/spaceship came to life and U2 finally appeared (Bono must be the biggest individual holder of Bowie Bonds or something... it was freakin' sweet!).

U2 started with some crap from their new album which, I might add, is terrible. Then they played some of their more recent hits which the crowd loved and of course some stuff off of Joshua Tree and War that was greatly appreciated by 25+ crowd (the two 16 year olds in front of me were like "what the fuck is this?"... good music, a-holes).

Of course, it wouldn't be the U2 marketing/cause machine if Bono didn't take advantage of having a captive audience to spread the word on his latest cause (What don't we eat? Red meat! WHYYY don't we eat it? It's murder!). In addition to the standard AIDS in Africa cause, Bono wanted to make sure we all knew about Aung San SuuKyi, the Prime Minister of Burma(Myanmar?), who was elected in 1990 and has spent the majority of her time under house arrest.

After several encores, U2 left the stage and the house lights came on to "Rocket Man" by Elton John.

While "At A Medium Pace" is slowly approaching death rattle status... I thought it should be announced that Patrick Swayze has passed.

Swayze starred in the followings hits:"Road House" (if you like gratuitous boobage and violence, check it out)"Point Break" (playing a villanous surfer/bank-robber opposite a young Keanu)"Donnie Darko" (as a pederast)

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

I know things have been slow over here at Medium Pace for a while. FPMKE was the only one keeping two blogs alive for a stretch there because the rest of us were either too busy, forgetful, or out of town. Now that school is back in session I have found that my "free" time is nowhere to be found. I did however find time to check out a new show. Tool Academy.

If you are not currently watching Tool Academy, be sure to set your DVRs to record this immediately. Seriously. Stop reading right now, turn on the TV, and push record after searching for it. This show is fantastic!

A bunch of tools are basically competing to see who can become not that much of a tool. Their girlfriends signed them up for this and they were lead to believe that they were on a show to find the biggest party guy. Now they know what's going on and they know they are all tools. There is nothing quite like seeing a room full of guys crying when they confess to cheating on their girlfriends or how just minutes after that, they can be seen doing shots and getting drunk and talking about awesome it is to cheat on their girlfriends. This show is awesome!

Wanna know the best part about this show? If you have a girlfriend/fiance/wife, simply show her about 5 minutes of this show and you will seem like the best boyfriend/fiance/husband ever. All of these guys are such big douchers that they make normal guys seem like Prince Charming.

Tool Academy is on VH1 and I believe new episodes air on Sundays. The last episode is on like 10 times in the next two days so there are plenty of opportunities to check it out.